Would inclement weather deter you from voting?The Iowa Caucuses will begin the Presidential Election season on Feb.1, but a snowstorm moving across the central and northern Plains could impact travel for voters heading home.(AP Photo/ Dave Weaver, File)

The 2016 Presidential Election season officially gets underway on Monday evening, Feb. 1, with the Iowa caucuses, and advancing snow may affect voter turnout. Voters from Iowa's 99 counties will meet in caucuses as the first step to determine who will represent the state at the Republican and Democratic national conventions.

However, a winter storm moving in from the Intermountain West will unleash a blizzard from Colorado to Iowa and northern Michigan later on Monday into early Wednesday.

The voting prospects weather-wise could become precarious before the close of the caucuses because of the incoming storm system, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Matt Rinde stated. Snow and a wintry mix will arrive in part of the state on Monday afternoon and evening.

The caucuses are scheduled to be begin at 7:00 p.m. CST. "Enough snow and a wintry mix will occur to make roads slippery in the southern third of Iowa as people are heading home from the caucuses," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said. "The worst of the storm will overspread the state later Monday night into Tuesday."

Payback's a bitch, ain't it? Especially when it comes in the shape of a massive winter storm which will seriously impact turnout for the Iowa caucuses. As the polling demographics have shown, Hill's best hope lay with a very high turnout from the older voters. I happen to be a 74 year old Judge of Elections in my state, and I'm here to tell you that a major snow storm, with fifty mile per hour winds, will seriously depress turnout by older voters.

I mean, how many of them are so enamored of Clinton they will risk a traffic accident or slip and fall and broken hip? The impact of weather on voter turnout is a major reason all states should switch to mail in ballots.

Well, lurking hillbots, at least it provides a face-saving excuse for the upcoming Hillary loss in Iowa - blame it on Mother Nature!

On the Democratic side, Sanders has also consolidated support for a 16-point lead over Hillary Clinton, 55 percent to 39 percent, according to the poll.

That's a 7-point increase for Sanders from last month and a 7-point decrease for Clinton — a 14-point swing in one month favoring Sanders.

Clinton's favorability has also dropped, from 83 percent in December to 74 percent in the latest poll, while Sanders has risen from 85 percent to 90 percent over the past month.

The survey of 444 likely GOP primary voters and 408 Democratic primary voters was conducted Jan. 20-24 via landlines and cellphones with a margin of error of 4.7 points for Republicans and 4.9 points for Democrats.

This is from the award winning (best blog/Netroots Nation), progressive, Alaskan-based blog, The Mudflats. The author is Carl Johnson who has a juris doctorate from the University of Minnesota Law School and practiced law in Alaska for 10 years. He painstakingly sets forth the explicit language of the PLCAA Act and calls out Hillary as a liar in her attacks on Bernie on the topic of gun control. He concludes:

"So, not only does this law not provide blanket, absolute immunity to the gun industry for any civil or criminal liability, but the folks at the Brady Campaign have even published a road map on how to successfully sue the gun industry for a variety of causes of action. Comparing their motivations to those of Hillary Clinton, I would certainly trust their word over hers on this subject."

His analysis painstakingly proves this law does not create any new immunities that did not already exist at common law. It also keeps in place the right previously at common law to sue over defects in design or manufacture that cause injury. And Hillary Clinton should, and does, know better.

He further explains that the key problem with the law is not how it is written, but how courts have been interpreting it. With the exception of one state case, most courts have been reading the exceptions rather narrowly. Thus, a good “fix” for the law would be to fill in the gaps where the courts have been interpreting the exceptions too strictly.

Hillary Is Off Target To Attack Bernie On GunsNow that the race is tightening, Hillary Clinton is increasing her attacks on Bernie Sanders regarding his record on gun control. Starting back in October and as recently as this week, she notes how she and President Obama while in the Senate voted against a bill that would grant blanket immunity to gun manufacturers from law suits. In contrast, she claims, Bernie Sanders voted in favor of the bill.
Simply put, Hillary Clinton is not only lying but, as a former attorney, she should know better.

The law in question was the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). The PLCAA generally shields licensed manufacturers, dealers, and sellers of firearms or ammunition, as well as trade associations, from any civil action “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm or ammunition, but does provide six exceptions where a civil suit could be maintained.
Now, as a former attorney, Hillary Clinton should be able to read this statute and enjoy the fine summary provided by the Congressional Research Service highlighting these provisions. She would be able to read it, understand it, and know that she is speaking falsely when claiming the law makes gun manufacturers “totally free of liability for their behavior.”

Mrs. Clinton would, as a former attorney, know that one of these exceptions affirms what is available at the common law – the ability to sue a manufacturer for a defective design or construction of a product that causes harm when used as intended. Tort law is often a powerful tool for people to enact changes in behavior among manufacturers. So, if you buy a shotgun and it backfires and harms someone, you can still file a lawsuit against that gun manufacturer. Actually, because of this law, it is clear that manufacturers are totally liable for their behavior – their design, their manufacturer, their sales (if done in violation of applicable laws). But standard products liability only applies to liability for harm caused during the normal use of that product. It would not apply during abnormal use.

Thus, Mrs. Clinton would also know that manufacturers typically enjoy common law immunity from the tortious or criminal acts committed in the use of their products. One such immunity available at common law is the intervening act of a third party. No one can sue Toyota for manslaughter if I use my Prius to commit vehicular homicide. It wasn’t any design or manufacturing defect that caused the injury, but rather my intervening criminal act that did. But they could sue Toyota under the common law if, rather than vehicular homicide, the death was caused because my brakes failed and I struck someone as a result of that failure.

Pittsburgh attorney David Fawcett, a former Allegheny County Councilman whose legal crusade against an Appalachian coal baron prompted a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and a John Grisham novel, will run for state attorney general as a Democrat next year.

"The office of Attorney General is, unfortunately, dysfunctional," said Mr. Fawcett, referencing beleaguered incumbent Kathleen Kane. “I'm running to provide the kind of leadership needed to reinvigorate the office and return integrity to it."

An attorney at Reed Smith, Mr. Fawcett is best known for representing Hugh Caperton, a West Virginia coal-mine owner who sued one of the industry's titans: former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship

Mr. Caperton alleged that Mr. Blankenship drove his firm into bankruptcy through unscrupulous business dealings, and in 2002, Mr. Fawcett and another attorney won him a $50 million jury verdict. West Virginia's Supreme Court reversed the ruling, but the 3-2 majority included a justice who won election with $3 million of help from Mr. Blankenship. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled the justice should have recused himself because, given Mr. Blankenship’s support, the "probability of actual bias rises to an unconstitutional level.""I knew it was going to be the fight of my life," Mr. Fawcett said of the case,which inspired John Grisham's 2008 novel "The Appeal." The Caperton saga, he said, “implicates the entire justice system.”

While Mr. Fawcett has never been a prosecutor, he said he had “decades of experience” in “fighting companies who value profits over the rule of law, and taking on judicial corruption."

Silver Spring, MD – Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) issued the following statement in reaction to the Clinton campaign attack on Senator Bernie Sanders’ stance on “Single Payer” healthcare.

“I am grateful to Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton for keeping their presidential debate on a higher plane than the Republican candidates until now. The attack launched on Senator Sanders by the Clinton campaign this week, claiming that his long-standing position supporting single payer healthcare could threaten the insurance company supported ACA, is at best disingenuous and a grave error in judgment.

“This is an attack we would expect from Wall Street, the New York Post, or Fox News and has no place in a Democratic Primary or politics at all. It is wrong, incendiary and presents America with a false choice; the kind of choice we have become accustomed to hearing from the Tea Party.

“’Single Payer’ is the right choice for America and we call on Secretary Clinton to recognize that.”

See, her felonious father-in-law, "Fast Eddie" Mezvinsky, the guy who stills owes $10 million to the victims of the scams for which he served time in federal prison - well he started out as a state legislator.
He won a seat in the Iowa Legislature in 1968 and made headlines by demanding forthright business practices to protect consumers. During the legislative session, he held up a sausage that he said had rat claws in it. He earned his first nickname: "Rat Claw" Mezvinsky. Fellow legislators smelled an attention-seeker.

Then he was elected Congressman from Iowa's 1st district - good family man with wife of 10 years and 4 kids. But when he hit the bright lights of Washington, he fell for a hot little TV correspondent and dumped the wifey for her ("her" being the mother of Chelsea's hubby). Iowa's voters then dumped him.

A quarter-million here, a half-million there - 8,000 transactions in five years. When shady African businessmen opened a suitcase of money, he was there to inspect it. When wealthy American investors were looking for a good return, he was there to offer one.

He was "Fast Talkin" Eddie." That's what political reporters privately called him in the 1970s.
Mezvinsky knows about wretched endings.

He is 66 and serving the beginning of an 80-month sentence in federal prison for numerous charges, including bank, wire and mail fraud. He took people's money - more than $10 million - in elaborate lies and schemes.

Prosecutors later would call Mezvinsky a one-man "crime wave" and said they uncovered elements of fraud in nearly every business deal of his dating to 1980. "We didn't even bother to look back farther," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer.